Joe Friel's Blog is for the serious endurance athlete who wants to stay current on the science and art of training for sport. Here you will find Joe Friel's thoughts and ideas before they are published anywhere else. You may also visit www.TrainingBible.com for more detailed and free content. Joe's training plans are available at www.TrainingPeaks.com.

10/24/2013

In the last few aging posts I’ve been walking you through how you
can customize your periodization to more closely match your age by focusing on
the recovery side of the training equation. I hope you are giving some thought
to how you can adjust your microcycles
and mesocycles to ensure that you come into the key workouts with adequate recovery. That will
boost your fitness while helping you to slow, or even reverse, the decline in
performance typically seen with aging. And planning based on getting adequate
recovery after hard days will help you avoid injury.

After you come up with a plan it’s critical that you are flexible in
applying it. So what does flexible
mean? It means paying close attention to how you feel. If you are not feeling
rested enough to do a high-dose workout, even though one may be planned for
that day, reduce its difficulty — intensity, duration or
both. Or even consider taking the day off if your fatigue is great enough. Training
through deep fatigue will only result in a poor quality session and more
fatigue – not better fitness.

Periodization is only a tool to help you train more effectively. Too
many seem to see it as a rigid dictum requiring you to do every workout as
scheduled regardless of how you feel at the time. Considering it as such is a
sure way to end up injured or overtrained.

There are a few athletes – and I do mean “few” – who are so in-tune
with their bodies and have such a depth of experience with training that they
don’t need detailed training plans. You may know of a good athlete like this
who expresses disdain at periodization and planning. Yet they do good workouts,
recover well and have great races. Regardless of what they may say, however, they
do have a plan. And they are periodizing. It just isn’t written
down and worked out in detail on a daily and weekly basis as I’ve been
suggesting. It’s in their heads. They know what needs to be done and when. Dose
and density are always on their minds even if they don’t know what the terms
mean. What they’re doing is called “periodization on demand” and “recovery on demand” (here and here) which work well for a few athletes. Most are
incapable of training this way because they give only lip service to “listening
to their bodies.” In reality most follow the philosophy of “never enough.” That
almost always results in breakdowns such as an injury or overtraining when not
following a well-designed plan.

In the next post in this series I’ll suggest an overview to periodization
at the macrocycle (seasonal) level with adjustments made for senior athletes.
By the time we’re done with this planning stuff you’ll be able to train more
effectively and race faster. Hang in there with me. We’re almost done. Only a
couple more periodization posts. I know this probably seems a lot more
complicated than what you expected. But the payoff next season and for years to
come is significant.

10/21/2013

A reader asked me a few days ago if aerobic capacity training,
which is what I suggest you probably need a bit more of in your training if
you’re a typical senior athlete, means you should aim to reach your VO2max
heart rate – which is near maximal heart rate – every time you do such a
workout. In short, the answer is “no.” Here’s the details.

If you’re training with a heart rate monitor (which is the least
effective way to do intervals due to heart rate lagging effort early in the
session and within each rep) you should aim for heart rate zone 5b with each
interval. You may not be able to achieve that on the first two or three
interval reps due to HR lag. The 5b zone starts 3 beats per minute above your
lactate threshold heart rate (which is the intensity at which you begin to
“redline”) and tops out short of your max HR (see my Training Bible or Total Heart Rate Training books for zone details by sport). For the first few intervals when using a HR monitor,
base your effort on perceived exertion – above your perceived redline.

If you’re a cyclist or triathlete using a power meter, use Coggan’s zone 5 which also starts just above FTP (similar to LTHR – when you begin to redline)
and rises to about VO2max power. As a runner or swimmer doing intervals based
on pace, use my pace zones
5b. These zones do not require that you
achieve your max HR or even max effort with every interval (also recall that I suggested this could be
fartlek or hill work, or even a fast group workout). Your effort should exceed your redline to be affective in achieving the goal we
are seeking here – to boost your aerobic capacity.

Power and pace are by far the most effective ways to do intervals.

As a quick review, the intervals I’m suggesting here are 30 seconds
to 5 minutes long with equal recovery durations after each. Do a total of 5 to
15 minutes of combined interval time within a session. Start with the low ends
of both – 30 seconds and 5 minutes. As the season progresses you should be able
to do longer intervals with more total interval time. Again, these can be done
as fartlek (meaning unstructured and based entirely on “feel” for durations and
intensity), as hill repeats or even as a group workout that includes several
fast portions.

As I’ve mentioned before, intervals increase your risk of breakdown.
The most common is injury. But one of those risks may be related to heart
disease. If you have reason to believe there is something cardiovascularly
risky for you in doing high-intensity intervals (for example, a history of
heart disease in your family), see your doctor before starting such a program.
In fact, as a senior athlete, it’s probably a good idea to get a check up
regularly regardless.

Now back to periodization for the senior athlete.

In the last aging
post I discussed how to customize a short period of your training, such as a week or
a few days – a “microcycle” in periodization-speak – to match your personal rate
of recovery. You may recall that I suggested training in nine-day cycles if you
can fit it into your lifestyle. That’s not possible for many so I also offered
suggestions on how to use a more common seven-day cycle in such a way as to
reduce your risk of breaking down.

Let’s do something along the same line for the next longer period
of time in your training plan – the “mesocycle.” This is typically a grouping
of two or more microcycles. For example, the Base and Build periods are
mesocycles.

In traditional periodization, Base and Build are generally four
weeks long – 28 days – with the last few days intended for rest and recovery
before starting the next mesocycle. But as a senior athlete I’d suggest making
these shorter – about 19 to 23 days. This allows for more frequent rest and
recovery, which is what you do in the last few days of a mesocycle.

Nineteen to twenty-three days would be the combination of two
microcycles of either 14 days (2 x 7-day microcycles) or 18 days (2 x 9-day
microcycles). Then add five days for R&R on to the ends of both of these. That
makes for 19 (14 + 5) or 23 (18 + 5) total days in the senior athlete’s
mesocycle. So now your R&R will occur more frequently than if you were
doing a 28-day mesocycle. And since recovery is one of the major obstacles to
senior performance, this has the potential to boost your training quality and
therefore your race performace.

Five days of rest and recovery are usually adequate to shed the
built-up fatigue of the last mesocycle before starting the next. But it could
be that you need more or less time at the end of a mesocycle to recover. In
that case adjust the total number of mesocycle days to match your needs. This
can be done “on the fly,” depending on how you feel at the time. Still a bit
tired after 5 days of R&R? Take another day to rest up. Feeling great after
3 days? Start the next mesocycle with a longer-than-usual microcycle.

How long you take to recover mostly depends on how challenging the
preceding microcycles were. The senior athlete usually knows that the more
high-intensity training that was done, the more R&R that is needed. For
example, you may find that R&R after a Base mesocycle requires less time
than after a Build mesocycle. Adjust the number of R&R days accordingly. If
unsure, allow for more to get rested up. One of the biggest mistakes you can
make in training is to start the next mesocycle slightly tired. It just
snowballs from then on.

If you’re doing seven-day microcycles in a 21-day mesocycle and
need only five days of recovery at the end (few athletes, even seniors, need
seven days for R&R), that leaves you with two “extra” days (7 + 7 + 5 = 19,
21 – 19 = 2). This means that the first microcycle of the next mesocycle would
be nine days instead of seven. So you could, essentially, increase the density
of your training by adding one more high- or medium-dose workout at the start
of the next period. Another option is to use one of those days to measure your
progress with a field or lab test (these are described in my Training Bibles). Then, after a day of rest, return to your
normal, seven-day training microcycle.

I hope that this and the previous post on microcycle design are helping you plan your training to better match your individual dose and
density needs. I know all of this periodization stuff is a bit tedious, but
time devoted to such planning now will pay off with better training later on because
you will work on what’s important while getting adequate recovery. Quality
training and recovery are the two keys to effective training. And recovery
seems to be the greatest challenge we have as senior athletes.

Yesterday
on a recovery ride around Tuscany with Jesper Olesen, a Dane I met in Lucca
where I’ve been training for the last several weeks, he asked me about
something that always gets me going – “reverse periodization.” Would it be wise
for him to train that way since getting in high volume is difficult in the
winter?

Before
getting into my answer, how about if I first explain what reverse periodization
means.

The typical
explanation is that it’s a way of organizing training so that in the Base
period the athlete does short duration and low volume, but high intensity –
especially above the lactate threshold. Then in the Build period the intensity
is reduced to below the lactate threshold and workout duration is increased
resulting in higher volume. I know that sounds very inviting to many athletes,
but there’s a basic flaw in the thinking, which doesn’t necessarily make
training in this way wrong. It just makes the concept wrong-headed. I’ll
explain that.

The concept
of reverse periodization makes a basic, flawed assumption: all athletes,
regardless of the event they are training for, when using “standard” periodization
should do high duration/volume in Base and high intensity in Build. That’s why
its proponents call their concept “reverse” periodization. But that’s not
exactly the way periodization is meant to work. It’s not always high
duration/volume before high intensity and then the race.

The basic
premise of periodization is this: The
closer in time you get to the A-priority race you’re training for, the more
like the race your training should become. Doing just the opposite – making
your workouts more unlike the race as
you approach it – would be counterproductive. You’d go to the start line having
done few workouts like the race.

For many
events and athletes, intensity is the key to performance. Using reverse periodization, when an athlete goes to the start line it may have been
several weeks since any race-like intensity was done. He or she has been focused on duration and volume instead. Or at best, only a small amount of race-like intensity has been done recently. And for shorter events (let’s
say that means less than about 4 hours) what’s the most critical element of the
serious athlete’s race preparation? Race-like intensity. Doing less of it as you approach race day is just the opposite of what's needed.

So the flawed
basic assumption about the philosophy of periodization it’s making is why I say
it’s “wrong-headed.” Standard periodization doesn’t work that way. But it isn’t
necessarily wrong to train the way it suggests – meaning high intensity in Base
and high duration/volume in Build.

If training
for a long event, greater than 4 hours, then race duration becomes more
critical because race intensity is becoming so low that achieving it is not a
big problem. The greater problem is maintaining that low intensity for many,
many hours. So in this case, doing high intensity in Base, especially late
Base, and high duration/volume in Build is exactly what the concept of periodization
intends – the closer to the race you get, the more like the race training
should become.

As it turns
out, Jesper is training for such long events. So using this method is a
reasonable way for him to train. He would make training increasingly like the
race by doing this. So it’s really not “reverse” periodization he’d be doing.

10/18/2013

Training
dose and density are really all about
recovery. Dose has to do with how great the daily training load is. Density is how
many high-dose workouts you can do in a given period of time, such as a week or
month, while still allowing for recovery in order to avoid the risk of injury
or overtraining.

Besides
individualizing the dose and density of training, your recovery is also largely
determined by certain aspects of your lifestyle such as sleep, nutrition and other
recovery enhancers. I wrote about some of them previously in this series on
aging – here and here. In this post I want to
address how to match your training plan with your rate of recovery.

As
with all things related to recovery – and just about everything else when
talking about aging – we each have unique circumstances. So I won’t be able to
tell you exactly what your dose and density should be. You’ll have to figure
that out for yourself. But I’ll give you help in getting started.

You’ll
recall in my last post here I again proposed that in
order to slow the loss of performance with aging there are two things nearly
all older athletes should focus on – aerobic capacity and strength training.
Both involve high-intensity effort and so require consideration of how many of
each you should do in a training microcycle, such as a week. This brings us to
the topic of periodization.

I’d like to do a quick and dirty review of periodization – relative
to senior athletes, aerobic capacity and strength training – just to make sure
we’re on the same page. Periodization in general is explained in much greater
detail in my Training Bible
and other books.

A good starting place for this discussion is how long your microcycle should be. A microcycle is
the shortest training period and usually is only a few days long. Seven is the
most common number as that generally fits nicely with a work week. Shorter
workouts can be done Monday through Friday with longer ones on the weekend when
most athletes have more free time. But seven days may not be optimal for most
athletes. In fact, it seldom is if we are only considering your rate of recovery, physiological
capacity for adaptation and fitness enhancement.

If you are retired or don’t have a demanding weekly work schedule,
you may consider changing the number of days in a microcycle to enhance dose
and density. I’ve found that nine is a much better number of days for most
senior athletes. By doing a hard (high-dose) workout (for example, a race-specific workout, aerobic
capacity, lactate threshold or strength training) every third day you then have
two days to recover and be ready for the next one. The two recovery days may include
a day off combined with an easy workout, or cross training (cross training is
especially good for senior runners). Or it could be two easy workouts, or an
easy session in your primary sport plus cross training.

Using a nine-day microcycle your general training routine might
look like this:

Of course, what you do in training is dependent on what period of the
season it is – Prep, Base, Build, Peak, Race or Transition. So consider the
above high-dose days as broad, general suggestions. My Training Bible books address the details of what workouts to do and
when. Also, not every high-dose day should necessarily be the same type of
workout.

Going back to the nine-day microcycle discussed above, an athlete
who is capable of managing greater density may consider making days 3, 6 and/or
9 aerobic endurance (zone 2) or even tempo (zone 3) training days. Or, if three
high-dose sessions in a nine-day microcycle is too challenging (meaning
recovery is inadequate) then one high-dose could be changed to a moderate-dose
(aerobic endurance or tempo) day. It may also be that two recovery days after a
high-dose session aren’t enough for some seniors. In that case it may be
necessary to schedule three after a hard day. Your microcycle could then be four, eight or twelve days long. All of this means that your microcycle is
quite flexible; design it to fit your unique needs.

If you are stuck with a seven-day microcycle due to your work
schedule or other lifestyle determiners then your block may look something like
this:

The seven-day microcycle reduces both the dose and density of
training relative to nine days in order to allow for adequate recovery and
therefore reduces the resulting fitness adaptation. Another option of the
seven-day cycle would be to do only two high dose sessions in a week (perhaps
days 1 and 5) thus allowing for five recovery and/or moderate dose workouts.

There are other ways of periodizing the microcycle to fit a given
athlete’s lifestyle constraints and typical recovery rate. With a little
creativity you can come up with something that works even better for you than
what I’ve suggested here. As I’ve mentioned numerous times in this series,
athletes are unique. Do what best matches your individual needs.

In my next post in this series I’ll discuss mesocycle design
relative to the senior athlete's recovery.

I'm going to be purchasing your book "The Cyclist's Training Bible", but in the meantime I have a question for you regarding cycling within specific heart rate zones/ranges.

I'm 41 years old and started (recreational) cycling this year, mostly as a means of cardio exercise. I'm not extremely fit, but have become more fit than I have been for a long time. I have completed 2 metric century rides and usually try to do one 60-80 km ride once a week and 20-25km rides twice a week prior to heading to the office.

I've noticed that my heart rate is usually in the 165-180 range for most of my ride (many times around 171-175 for quite some time -- at least that's what I usually see when looking at my cyclometer). I haven't tracked how much variance there is, however, my concern is the possibility of this being too taxing on my heart. My last couple of rides (30-50km rides), I have tried staying between 150 and 160 bpm just to be safe.

Can being in this range for a long period of time be dangerous? I notice that I feel that my heart is still racing several hours after a ride (although I have noticed that after stopping and taking off the heart rate monitor shortly after my ride it has already dropped to around 130 or less).

Should there be any reason for concern? Should I even be monitoring that closely?

My answer:

Let's address this from two different perspectives. The first has to do with "high" heart rate. The second with if your heart is in danger due to exercise.

Heart rate is as variable as shoe size is. There is a bell-shaped curve when it comes to HR. You may simply be at the high end of the curve. I assume you're basing your concern on "220 - your age," which is no more likely to be right than assuming shoe size has a predictive formula based on age. There isn't one HR that is appropriate for every person, for every level of exercise intensity. There is no reason to be concerned about your exercise HR unless you experience the symptoms of heart disease (pressure in chest, radiating pain in neck or arm, weakness or dizziness, nausea, irregular heartbeats, etc). If you experience any of these or feel there is really something unusual about your HR, please see your doctor right away. Here is a blog post Dr. John Post and I wrote on this topic sometime back which may help you understand your exercise HR.

As for damage to your heart due to exercise, it's a topic open for debate among experts on the topic. You might read this for both points of view.

10/15/2013

I’ve
been making the point, based on the aging research, that experienced senior
athletes are most likely to improve or maintain their endurance performance by
focusing on aerobic capacity and muscular strength. Such training is high
intensity. That presents the possibility of injury since older athletes are
more “fragile” than they were when younger.

There
isn’t just one way to train, however, that works for all senior athletes. The
research is drawing general conclusions based on a wide sample. Not everyone
has the same needs. The newer you are to your sport, for example, the more
likely you are to improve or maintain your performance by simply putting in
lots of training time. For the experienced athlete such training is of less
value. High intensity is likely to be more beneficial, albeit risky, for these
athletes. There are other considerations besides experience.

Your
unique individual situation must always be considered when designing a training
plan. This should take into account your age, previous training, body weight,
health, sensitivity to training stress, risk of injury, time available for
training, the goal event, training partners and much more. Then there are the
environmental factors where you live and train to consider, such as altitude,
terrain, weather, training venue availability and on and on. Even if aerobic
capacity and strength training are right for you physiologically, some of these
factors may interfere with such training.

Aerobic
capacity training may also not be your limiter. The other determiners of
endurance performance are lactate threshold and economy. Let’s do a quick
review of all three so you can draw a conclusion as to which you most need to
address in your training. The best way to determine your training needs for
each of these is to be tested for VO2max and ask the technician for a comparison of your data relative to other athletes of various ages. Such tests are often available at
medical clinics; universities; health clubs; running, bike and triathlon shops;
and are often offered as a service by coaches. Expect to spend at least US$150
for such a test.

Here
is a very brief summary of each (click on the links to read more details to help
determine what your major limiter may be).

Aerobic capacity (VO2max) – how much oxygen
your body is capable of utilizing at maximal aerobic effort to produce energy.
The higher this is, the greater your potential for high performance. In
experienced athletes, this responds best to workouts that are done at or
slightly below VO2max.

Lactate threshold – at what percentage of
VO2max do you begin to “redline” due to increasing acidity. May also be
referred to by the tester as anaerobic threshold, functional threshold, maximum
lactate steady state, and other names. Be sure to ask for a definition. The
higher the LT percentage is relative to VO2max, the better your endurance
performance is likely to be. An LT between 80 and 90% of VO2max is common in fit athletes of all ages. Again, similar to aerobic capacity, in experienced
athletes the most affective training to elevate LT is to do workouts at or
slightly below LT.

Economy – how efficiently you use
oxygen (a proxy for energy) to produce movement. As economy of movement
improves, you race faster or use less energy at any given submaximal effort.
It’s very difficult to improve economy in highly experienced athletes, but high
intensity has been shown to be effective (Gunnarsson).

In
previous posts (here, here, and here) I’ve discussed these three
endurance performance markers and their likelihood to be at the root of a
performance decline as you get older. I’m of the opinion that a great portion
(most?) of your loss over time is largely due to things you have some degree of
control over.

But back to testing... If
you’d rather not spend the money (I couldn’t blame you) you may just
want to accept that you fit the description of the experienced senior athlete
found in most of the research I’ve been reviewing. In that case you could draw
the conclusion that aerobic capacity is your major limiter and address it in
your training. More than likely, that’s what you would find out through
testing.

So
why not the other two? In the above posts I made the case that economy is
likely not the limiter for most senior athletes as many years of training for a
given sport has a tendency to refine and optimize one’s movement patterns. The
same goes for lactate threshold as it’s been shown to be at a higher percentage
of older athletes’ aerobic capacities than that of young athletes. That leaves
aerobic capacity. Several studies have shown this to be the one we geezers have
the greatest need to improve. It appears to decline for many reasons – some mix
of age- and training-related causes.

Then
there’s the matter of muscle loss that typically comes with aging and may also play a role in the decline of
your race results over a long period of time. Less muscle means less power. And
that means slower speed.

This
brings us back to what can be done to slow the losses, maintain current levels
or even improve aerobic capacity and muscle mass – again, assuming these are
limiters for you. I’ve previously proposed two solutions that both involve
high-intensity training: aerobic capacity intervals (or fartlek, hill reps, hard group workouts, etc) and weight lifting. Heavy
resistance strength training (Vale) and high-intensity aerobic capacity training
(Pritzlaff, Pritzlaff) have been shown to stimulate the production of anabolic
hormones – such as testosterone, estrogen, growth hormone and insulin-like
growth factor – at a greater rate than low-intensity training while also being
more effective for performance gains in well-trained athletes (Laursen). Such
hormones build and remodel the tissues necessary for improvements in your
aerobic capacity and muscle strength. They keep you "young."

Let’s again take a look at the risk associated with such training. High-intensity training
increases the possibility of injury due to great stress. So if you are to train
as I’m proposing here, some how you must decrease the risk. The way to do this
is to be both cautious with training load starting points, and conservative
with their increases. This comes down to what sport scientists call “dose” and
“density.”

Dose has to do with how hard a
given workout is – its duration and intensity. Duration may not be a problem
for you (although it often is for runners who may need to consider cross training on easy, recovery days). Most senior athletes I’ve known have gravitated toward doing long, rather
slow workouts. If you’re like most senior athletes, high intensity likely gets
little attention in your workouts which further increases your chances of an
injury if you bump up the training zones suddenly. To keep your risk of injury
manageable it’s important that you be conservative with high-intensity
workloads, especially when doing workouts such as aerobic capacity intervals
and heavy resistance training. That means knowing what your limits are and
staying well below them. Stop the interval session when you know you have one or
two good reps left in you. Don’t try to beat your 1-repetition max in the
weight room on your last set.

That’s
dose. Let’s examine density.

Density describes how frequently you
do these risky workouts. The more frequent the challenging workouts are done, the
greater the density and the higher your risk. Allow plenty of time between hard
sessions. When you first start training this way that may mean one such workout
in a week. That gives you six days of low-intensity to fully recover. As the
season progresses and your body slowly adapts, you may be able to make these workouts more dense,
meaning fewer recovery days between them. The older you are, the less dense
your training should probably be. A 50-year-old can typically handle more
density than a 70-year-old. The same goes for dose.

For triathletes this does not mean do multiple high-intensity aerobic capacity sessions in each sport. A senior triathlete when first starting such a training regimen may only do one such workout for the entire week. It's then best to use it for your weakest sport. Over time, more aerobic capacity sessions may be added to the week. The triathlete must also consider the risk associated with such training in each sport. For example, high-intensity swim training has a lower dose-density risk than running.

The bottom line for both dose and density is
this: Seldom try to find your limits. Instead, slowly “push them higher from
the bottom up.” Do not “pull them up from the top.” That means, don’t force your body to adapt with
excessively high dose and density. Instead, allow it to adapt slowly. Be
cautious and conservative. Restrict both the volume of high intensity and its
frequency. Train within your known limits. So what does that mean? This has to do with training periodization for
senior athletes, which I’ll get into in my next post.

10/13/2013

I had my
last sprint triathlon of the season today, and for the first time (and won't be
the last!) I wore my heart rate monitor.

On the
bike, I was feeling good, and actually had an avg heart rate in zone 5b. I was
pushing but felt very comfortable. When I hit the run, I just couldn't get my
legs turning over. 7 days before, I completed a 10k run at an avg pace of 6:34
m/miles, with an avergae heart rate of 182 bpm. Today i averaged 7:07 min/miles
for the 5k run of the triathlon. My avg heart rate for the run (170bpm) was 10
beats below my functional threshold heart rate of 182bmp.

Two
things stand out at me: first, I was comfortably cycling above my cycling FThr.
Second, I couldn't elevate my heart rate to threshold in the run. I just didn't
have the energy.

On a side
note, the majority of my training this year has been aerobic, zone 2, as I
completed an Iron distance event in July. Your books were paramount to my
success!

Is there
a simple answer to this?

Appreciate
the time if you or one of you coaches could answer my email.

My Answer:

"I
just didn't have the energy" is really the key point here--not
your heart rate. The issue really isn't how high or low your HR was, but
rather your speed--regardless of HR. Train to improve that (intervals, hills,
fartlek, etc along with your z2 training) while placing less emphasis on HR.
It's merely an indicator of how hard the engine is working. It doesn't regulate
performance at all. A related, recent tweet of mine went something like this: "Being
concerned with how high your HR is relative to sport performance is like
telling your auto mechanic that your car is going too slowly because the
tachometer is reading low." Train your engine--the muscular
system--for power/speed and appropriate pacing while getting adequate recovery (rest and nutrition)
and your performance will likely improve. Good luck with your next race!

10/12/2013

Since
I started this aging series I’ve been getting lots of emails from older
athletes. Perhaps the most frequent comment I hear from them has to do with
recovery. Almost all tell me they recover slower than when they were young. Of
course, as with anything physiological, there is a lot of variance between
athletes when it comes to the age at which this first becomes noticeable. At
age 40 some are already beginning to experience an obvious slowing of recovery
while others in their 50s are seeing little in the way of change. By age 60
it’s usually obvious to those who are paying attention. Recovery rate seems to
be one of the best indicators of actually becoming “old.”

Why
does our recovery after a hard workout take longer with aging? It’s related to something
I’ve discussed in earlier posts – hormones. Hormones regulate our body’s
functions such as metabolism, sleep and mood. They also affect tissue growth
and development – the keys to recovery. As we age we produce less anabolic hormones such as testosterone,
estrogen, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor (Waters). All have an
anabolic (tissue-building) effect.

Another anabolic hormone under-produced with
advancing age you are undoubtedly familiar with is erythropoietin (EPO). That’s
also the name of a synthetic drug cycling has been dealing with since the early
1990s and has to do with the fall from grace of Lance Armstrong and numerous
other athletes. It’s produced normally by the body and controls red blood cell
production and their lifespan. Interestingly, it’s also associated with memory.
And, perhaps more importantly, is related to your aerobic capacity (VO2max) that
I’ve been writing about so much here. Less EPO means fewer red blood cells
which results in less oxygen being transported to the muscles and therefore a
reduced aerobic capacity. EPO production also decreases with age (Berliner).

As
with most aging conditions, we do have some degree of control, albeit quite
limited, over our hormones. You can speed up or slow down your body’s anabolic
hormone production. High intensity training (such as aerobic capacity intervals
or fartlek training) stimulates their secretion more so than low-intensity,
steady-state training (Hackney). Strength training has a similar affect
(Stokes). Both are untested in senior athletes but likely produce similar
results.

As
mentioned before, hormone secretion is especially high when you are asleep, the
key being the consistency of sleep over time rather than the duration of your
snoozing (Randler). Getting to bed at a regular time appears to be important
for natural hormone production. The type of exercise also is important. Although
preferable to no exercise at all, a steady diet of only long, slow distance
year after year while avoiding the weight room is likely to result in a steady
decline in hormonal activity.

This
latter point is why I’ve been encouraging you to train occasionally near your
aerobic capacity (my pace and heart rate zones 5b and Coggan’s power zone 5)
while doing resistance/strength training (again, see my Training Bible for details on both zones and strength training). As I’ve said
before here, there is no doubt that such training is risky. The primary risk has to do with injury, so you must be conservative when starting this sort
of training and cautious with increasing the workloads.

An
important point I’ve learned about training over thirty-some years of coaching
is that all workouts have some degree of risk associated with them. In that
regard, training is similar to investing in the stock market – the greater the
risk, the greater the potential reward. Low risk almost always means low reward
in both instances. As the risk increases so does the possibility of loss. In
the case of exercise this means injury. It also means overtraining. Even if you
are able to push yourself to an exceptionally high level of training while
avoiding injury, you are likely to become overtrained by doing too much
high-intensity training in
too little time thus reducing your hormone production (Urhausen).
Injury and overtraining are why it’s important to be conservative and cautious
with high-risk, high-intensity training.

In
my next post I’ll address optimal recovery from a training perspective and
offer suggestions on how to plan your training to include a wide range of
intensities relative to your seasonal periodization.

10/10/2013

Remember
my recent post on a study that found
well-trained athletes had lower max heart rates than sedentary people? Well,
here’s another related one. Researchers at the University of British Columbia
in Vancouver found that max heart rate decreases 3-7% as aerobic fitness
improves. And to further challenge our thinking, the study showed that when
tapering for a race max heart rate increases.
That implies a loss of fitness when tapering. This goes hand-in-hand with the seemingly
counterintuitive concept I’ve often proposed here and in my tweets that
tapering results in a reduction in fitness.

You
can’t cut back on training without losing fitness. If this wasn’t the case then
the way you would improve fitness is by just sitting in front of the TV every
day for several weeks. You have to train hard to make fitness improvements - not slack off. Of
course, what you gain when tapering during a peak period is a reduction in
fatigue that makes you feel more fit.
Coaches often call this “form.” When “on form” you’re rested, fresh, race
ready, and
very little fitness has been lost. The challenge when
tapering is to lose a lot of fatigue while only giving up a small amount of
fitness. That’s what makes peaking for a race so tricky.

10/09/2013

Can
the loss of performance with aging be overcome by training? Can you maintain
your 35-year-old aerobic capacity and muscle mass, the keys to aging
performance, when you’re 55 or even 75 years old? Most scientific research
tells us that it’s highly doubtful (Doherty, Faulkner, Foster, Phillips, Raue).
Even though much of this loss appears to be a result of disuse (LaRocca, Leyk, Wroblewski,
Wright), there is no doubt that there is a decline in endurance performance
with age that appears to be inevitable even among elite age group athletes regardless of sport.

We know, however, that the rate of loss can be slowed if you continue to train
at a workload similar to when you were younger, especially the
intensity of your workouts both in aerobic (Katzel) and strength training (Aagard,
Porter). I wrote about that here and here. But as many readers have told me recently in comments to this blog and in
emails, the problem is an increased incidence of injury resulting from
high-intensity efforts that seem to be especially high among runners. The other
problem is slow recovery. The keys to maintaining aerobic capacity and muscle
mass then are injury prevention and rapid recovery following workouts. I wrote
about recovery and aging a few weeks ago here. So let’s now examine Injury prevention in greater detail.

Modifications
to training are necessary to avoid an increased likelihood of injury. Typically, the older you are the easier it
is to become injured and the slower an injury is likely to heal (Kallinen).
Bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilage and muscles break down and form scar
tissue at lower levels of training stress than they did when you were younger.
An increased likelihood of orthopedic injuries may be the reason runners seem to slow down more than their similarly aged
peers in swimming and cycling. While running is not the only sport athletes get
injured in, it is more likely to produce orthopedic injuries than, for example,
swimming, cycling and cross country skiing. So the normal training stress of
runners often declines at a steeper rate over time. That may well be necessary.

In
terms of continued performance improvement, there is nothing worse than an
injury. It can easily result in a bunch of zeroes in your training log. Missed
workouts mean lost fitness and starting over again.

To
avoid injury, regardless of your sport, there are two things you must always
do. The first is to start at a training stress level you know you are fully
capable of managing. This has to do with how long and intense your workouts are
and your weekly volume of training. The second imperative to avoiding training
setbacks is to be patient with your progress. This is where most athletes make
their greatest mistake. Allow more time at each stage of training than you did
when you were younger. Be patient. Wisdom is supposedly one of the attributes
of age. Apply it to your training.

Increase
your workout durations and intensities slowly over time. Don’t rush to the next
level. It’s too risky. Counterbalance these two workout variables. When you increase the duration of your workouts, decrease their
intensity. When it’s time to increase intensity, decrease duration. For older athletes it's probably wise to avoid increasing both up at the same time. If you do, your risk of injury increases
exponentially. You may have gotten away with a double increase when you were
younger, but it’s now more likely to result in injury.

If
injured the timing of treatment is critical. Don’t wait to seek medical help. Every
athlete, but especially you as an older athlete, need someone in your corner
who can treat injuries, or even niggling aches, when they occur. This could be
a family physician, chiropractor, physical therapist, podiatrist or naturopath
who you trust, who knows your endurance sport and who understands the treatment
of aging athletes. I rely heavily on Nate Koch at Endurance Rehabilitation, a physical therapy practice where I spend my
winters in Scottsdale, Arizona. With my summers in Boulder, Colorado I go to
the Boulder Center for
Sports Medicine and to see Dr. Andy
Pruitt, an old friend and fellow aging cyclist. They’ve both been treating my
aching bones and soft tissues off and on for 11 years. I have complete faith in
their effectiveness when I place myself in their hands as I’ve had to do on
numerous occasions.

Closely
related to injuries is arthritis which becomes increasingly common with advances
in age. The best way to avoid this may well be continued exercise since it is less
common in athletes (Maharam). The research doesn’t tell us, however, if
exercise helps to prevent joint disease or if those who experience it drop out
of their sport becoming sedentary and so skew the data. If you suffer from
arthritis you have probably become adept at knowing not only what aggravates
it, but also how to modify your training to accommodate it until the inflammation
subsides. Prescribed medications may well be necessary at these times.

In
my next post I’ll take a look at other aspects of injury prevention and workout
recovery.